This Week In Gaming

04 June 2016

By Chris Kemp

Hello NAGintus and thanks for coming back for This Week In Gaming. This time around EA talks about why the Battlefield 1 pitch was initially rejected (and what won them over), Overkill talks Payday 2 and Payday 3, Rainbow Six: Siege entices buyers with a heavy discount and Overwatch posts some very impressive numbers. Then Capcom addresses the Street Fighter V fiasco, Ubisoft talks Watch Dogs 2 and Titanfall 2 narrows down its release window. All that, videos, more highlights from the week and a bag of potato chips, after the jump.

Yup, you read that title correctly. The education system in the States has apparently deteriorated to the point that, according to EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, the company was “worried that many of the younger consumers out there didn’t know that there was a World War 2 or Vietnam, so World War 1…”.

Big boss Patrick Soderlund was also not keen on the idea because he thought trench warfare didn’t sound like fun. There’s more to it than that though – and DICE’s pitch won Soderlund over in the end.

“I think what people don’t understand about World War 1 is the technology shift that went on during the war,” Jorgensen said. “People started the war on horseback and ended the war with airplanes and tanks and battleships and submarines. And that’s a huge opportunity for us to be able to do a video game around.”

I think what I find most amusing about all of this is that the ESRB rating for Battlefield 4 is “Mature” – i.e. 17 years and older, i.e. adults. There’s a lot of concerns for what “kids” like in a game that’s not supposed to be played by them. Shows what a joke that ratings system really is.

Payday 3 is on the way, but Payday 2 will be getting updated till 2017

No news yet on when the third instalment will be dropping after publisher Starbreeze takes over the series, but judging by the promised Payday 2 support it’s unlikely to be any time before the middle of next year.

Along with all the additions are some notable subtractions. Developer Overkill has finally caved (or perhaps Starbreeze stepped in) and promised to take back some of the much-maligned microtransactions that pissed off the entire fanbase.

Too little too late? Of course not, gamers are a fickle bunch.

So basically most of this is getting chucked out.

Rainbow Six: Siege is getting a discount push on PC right now, with a special Starter Edition being sold for the next two weeks.

This gives you two Operators (with enough credits to unlock two more) and access to all the same stuff as everyone else – you just have to grind for it.

It’s a pretty decent deal if you think it’s a game you’d be interested in, and you can unlock everything else for a further investment of $35 for spybucks whatever currency this game uses.

The cut-off date to purchase is 16 June (a public holiday here in SA!), and obviously everyone who bought before then hangs on to all the benefits. I haven’t played this game myself, but I hear it only really shines with a group of friends – so rope your mates into picking up the Starter.

Overwatch is killing sales with seven million players

With this many players in its first week, you can be confident that Overwatch is going to a permanent fixture in the multiplayer shooter scene. Blizzard continues its Midas touch for e-sports staples, and manages to sell a hefty seven million copies of a full-price multiplayer-only shooter with microtransactions? Well done.

I really enjoyed the beta, but personally I’m waiting for the price on this to come down a little. I’ve got a little too much to play right now to fork out R800+ for a multiplayer-only title – but maybe I’m just cheap.

Blizz CEO Mike Morhaime had this to say in the wake of the sales announcement, “Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch—from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who’d never picked up a game like this before—and we’re very grateful for everyone’s incredible passion and enthusiasm.

“We poured a lot of effort into creating a game—and a new universe—that anyone could enjoy. We’re ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we’re looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come.”

Blizz flexin’.

Capcom apologises for poor communication on Street Fighter V

The latest entry into the most popular competitive fighting franchise of all time has been an unmitigated disaster.

The game launched with a ton of issues, with NAG’s own Rick de Klerk delivering a somewhat scathing review. Months later and the game is still plagued with problems, and Capcom has been pretty poor at delivering updates.

The latest insult is DLC character Ibuki being delayed from May to June – with no notification from the mothership. They later released this pretty lame apology:

“We’ll be the first to admit that we can improve our communication with the community, in terms of where our priorities lie around the game and status updates.

“We plan to change that in the coming weeks and months and will work to quickly address topics that come up in the community as best we can.”

It gets lamer too when they switch focus to Ibuki: “While we planned to talk about the timing of her release this week, it’s clear that we should have been more upfront with everyone on the shift in timing.”

Pfft, come off it. How hard is to type up a five minute blog post? This for a game that still sits with the unforgivable problem of input delay. In a competitive fighting game. I don’t know, I think I’ve just lost all patience for games releasing with known bugs and issues, I just go into a blind rage and wake up three hours later covered in broken disc.

Watch Dogs 2 will make its debut at E3

Not too long ago we had the world’s least exciting leak – Watch Dogs 2. Now Ubisoft has confirmed it will be revealing the game alongside For Honor and Ghost Recon Wildlands at E3. They’re also promising to “unveil some surprises”. I really hope it has nothing to do with an “iconic” hat.

Ubisoft’s head honcho Yves Guillemot has said that Watch Dogs 2 will have a “new tone” and has the potential to be one of the publisher’s best-selling games ever. I’ll hold judgment till E3 I suppose, but I thought the first game was supremely average and am not very excited for this one.

Titanfall 2 gets a release date (kind of)

While EA haven’t gotten exact here, CFO Blake Jorgensen has stated that Titanfall 2 will be coming out within three weeks of Battlefield 1.

For reference, Battlefield 1 is releasing October 21. Here’s the catch though – we don’t know if this is three weeks before or three weeks after. With Call of Duty dropping on November 4th, one can’t help but think EA is hoping to smother the big shooter release of the year with their own AAA FPSes dropping before and after.

EA will be getting all of my monies this year – Battlefield 1 looks awesome and I was a huge fan of the first Titanfall.

Either they’ve changed the app ID, because we used to be able to buy it before, or something about the game has changed and in between the launch and the recent update, it’s somehow been pulled down and republished. Someone will have to e-mail them and find out.

Mark Wilson

The fact that the kids do not know the wars happened is even more reason to make games about them. I personally learned a heap load (especially about history) by playing video games such as the age of empires and the first medal of honour and call of duty games.

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